AUTHOR=Mastoi Qurat-ul-ain , Latif Shahid , Brohi Sarfraz , Ahmad Jawad , Alqhatani Abdulmajeed , Alshehri Mohammed S. , Al Mazroa Alanoud , Ullah Rahmat 

TITLE=Explainable AI in medical imaging: an interpretable and collaborative federated learning model for brain tumor classification

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Oncology

VOLUME=Volume 15 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2025.1535478

DOI=10.3389/fonc.2025.1535478

ISSN=2234-943X

ABSTRACT=IntroductionA brain tumor is a collection of abnormal cells in the brain that can become life-threatening due to its ability to spread. Therefore, a prompt and meticulous classification of the brain tumor is an essential element in healthcare care. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the central resource for producing high-quality images of soft tissue and is considered the principal technology for diagnosing brain tumors. Recently, computer vision techniques such as deep learning (DL) have played an important role in the classification of brain tumors, most of which use traditional centralized classification models, which face significant challenges due to the insufficient availability of diverse and representative datasets and exacerbate the difficulties in obtaining a transparent model. This study proposes a collaborative federated learning model (CFLM) with explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) to mitigate existing problems using state-of-the-art methods.MethodsThe proposed method addresses four class classification problems to identify glioma, meningioma, no tumor, and pituitary tumors. We have integrated GoogLeNet with a federated learning (FL) framework to facilitate collaborative learning on multiple devices to maintain the privacy of sensitive information locally. Moreover, this study also focuses on the interpretability to make the model transparent using Gradient-weighted class activation mapping (Grad-CAM) and saliency map visualizations.ResultsIn total, 10 clients were selected for the proposed model with 50 communication rounds, each with decentralized local datasets for training. The proposed approach achieves 94% classification accuracy. Moreover, we incorporate Grad-CAM with heat maps and saliency maps to offer interpretability and meaningful graphical interpretations for healthcare specialists.ConclusionThis study outlines an efficient and interpretable model for brain tumor classification by introducing an integrated technique using FL with GoogLeNet architecture. The proposed framework has great potential to improve brain tumor classification to make them more reliable and transparent for clinical use.